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About boebi

The Xbox HD-DVD drive is an external drive that I bet hooks up to the rear USB port. It only plays HD-DVD movies, not new kinds of games. D000hg, thats a very good point about the PS3...and I WILL be getting one...eventually. However, the PS3 only plays Blu-Ray and Im wondering which of these formats will win the war. I, too, am worried about DRM going out of control...its already happening to my iTunies music and I had to strip the DRM just to get one of my music players to read the songs that *I* paid for. *ARGH!*

Microsoft just announced that they're making an HD-DVD addon drive for the Xbox 360 during Bill Gates's keynote speech at CES 2006!
Im not too sure what to make of this myself. Depending on the price point of the device, I wonder if it would be worth it to get an addon like that or to get a standalone player.
Any opinions?

Any of the Visual Studio.NET versions can do both managed and unmanaged C++. You choose which one you'll be using when you create a new project. If you select somthing that says (.NET) in th name, youre using the managed C++. If you choose one that says "Win32 project" or something like that, youre not using .net and it is unmanaged (normal C++). Visual Studio is just a tool. C++ is used for making games, while VS.net is used to make programming easier. Good luck with your programming...just take it one step at a time and you'll be an elite programming god before you know it. Happy Coding!

There are different parts to .net. One is that all ".net languages" compile to the same bytecode...which is then JIT compiled when you run it. There is also a standardized class and type library so all code compiled to .net, whether it was originally written in C#, C++, BASIC, perl, whatever, can work together...typically by compiling one or more of those into .net dll's (which is stupid-easy). C# is a C++/Java-like language that Microsoft wrote specifically for .net coding...so it feels the most natural to use. Managed C++ can be kindof ugly, but it allows you to wrap unmanaged legacy code for use into your .net projects. It will be a VERY long time before C++ goes away. In Vista, however, C# will prolly be the best way to write your GUI stuff.

I've run into this problem too. I *think* there is an exe that comes with each new directx release that you can have people run to update the managed directx dlls. I havent tried this myself, however, and am very interesting to know if anyone else has found and solved this problem.

It can take that long to make new engines, depending on the dev team. But games take one or two years, not five. Plus most games that take that long actually miss a couple large hardware releases (at least in PC Land), and then they have to rush to adopt the new technology when they're ready to release. Also keep in mind that alot of the power of new consoles is simply the ability to display larger poly counts and textures, and that doesn't take a complete engine overhaul to do.

stdafx.h is an auto-generated file used to make precompiled headers. If you just leave it intact and don't do anything with it, it will never bother you. Or you can create a blank project, or set the project properties to not use precompiled headers. C# and DirectX work very well together and you get to ignore all that ugly COM syntax...using the newer Managed DirectX API. I suggest you check it out.

I get that error all the time and it's almost always when my game can't find its resource files. Keep in mind that VS looks in the main directory (usually the one with the sln file) when running in debug mode. You need to copy your exe to the root or do some sort of search for your resource folder dynamically so its always found.

Classes are always references (created on the heap)...always. Structs are usually copies (created on the stack)...the only time variables of struct types are not merely copies is when you use the "ref" or "out" keywords.

Interpreted code is not directly executed by the hardware...it gets "converted" during execution one instruction at a time (usually) to machine code. That process is much slower than running compiled code. If you take Java bytecode and run it on a really old JVM, the bytecode is being interpreted. If you run the same code on a hardware JVM, the bytecode "magically" becomes compiled cause it's executing directly on the CPU...no runtime conversion.

I have to add your post to my list of dumbest things said on the internet, Hobbit. Thanks for expanding my list. CPUs do not "interpret" machine code, they execute it. There's kinda a difference there. Please do yourself a favor and take some CS courses.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of much research covering the difference between the 25 year old brain and the 50 year old brain. Most research covers the extremes...extreme youth and extreme age. I would assume from that, that there isn't a difference enough in the brain between 25 and 50 to prompt people spending money and time on research. Just using my own knowledge, I would say that the only difference between a 25 year old and 50 year old would be that a 25 year old may be more willing to learn while the older person would be more set in his ways or unwilling. I think if you take two equally willing parties with equal IQs, no matter the age, they would both learn at the same rate.